


Misdialed

by conceptstage



Series: Single Chapter Critical Role [104]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Panic Attacks, crteamhumanweek2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21725755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptstage/pseuds/conceptstage
Summary: Team Human Week 2019 Day TwoPrompt: Modern AUHe sighed as he caught his breath but his heart was still pounding hard in his chest. “Why did you not hang up? When you realized it was a wrong number?”“I don’t know, man,” she mumbled in a way that told him she knew exactly why she didn’t hang up and was embarrassed by it. “You sounded… scared. I thought you might need help or something, whatever.” The line was silent for two heartbeats. “Do you?” she asked, her voice curious. “Need help?”He sighed. “I am fine. It was just a dream.”
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast
Series: Single Chapter Critical Role [104]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1436668
Comments: 11
Kudos: 309
Collections: Team Human Week 2019





	Misdialed

Caleb woke with a gasp, cold sweat drying on his face and arms, his throat sore. He spent a few seconds looking around his room with the dim lamp casting away the shadows. His breath finally started to slow to normal and he scrambled for his cellphone. His fingers were shaking and his eyes were flitting around the room as he typed in the familiar number and then held it up to his ear as it started to ring.

He heard a click as it was answered and started speaking before she could talk. “Nott…” he started, gasping her name like it was a lifeline. “I am sorry, I don’t know what time it is, I am sure I woke you up.” He paused a moment to glance at the clock on the bedside table. “It’s three. It’s three in the morning, I am sorry. I had another nightmare.” He paused to give Nott a chance to speak if she wanted and to take a deep breath. Nott didn’t speak. She rarely did on these calls because she was still half asleep but just talking about them out loud helped more than he could say so she was usually okay with at least pretending to listen. “I was a child again,” he said, closing his eyes. “Younger than I had been in real life at the Academy, younger than ten. I was strapped to the table in the lab, He… He was there, standing over me. For a moment, he was just staring at me… And then, little by little, he started cutting parts of a me away. My fingers, then my toes, then my feet and up my legs and I screamed and screamed but no one came to help.” He paused again and steady himself.

“Damn,” said a voice that was decidedly not his best friend, Nott Brenatto. His blood ran cold. “That’s messed up.”

“Who is this?” He asked. His voice shaking.

“You called me, man, I think I’m the one who should be asking that. You alright though?”

Caleb pulled the phone away from his face and looked over the phone number that he had typed in. He’d hit 8 instead of 9. His vision started to blur and he could feel his throat starting to close up. “Who is this- who- who are you?”

“Hey, hey,” she said, her voice rough but uneasily kind, like she wasn’t used to it. “It’s alright, man, you’re gonna be fine. It was an honest mistake, no big.” Caleb started wheezing as he breathed, his eyes watering. “Slow down, you don’t sound so good. Take slow breaths. My name is Beau. I’m a librarian in Zadash.” She paused and he started taking deep breaths to try and calm down. She wasn’t in Rexxentrum, she didn’t have an accent. Maybe this mistake wouldn’t get him killed today. He really needed to save Nott’s number in his phone but he was always worried that if he was caught his phone would lead them to his friend. “You feeling better?” He nodded, not trusting himself to speak, though he knew she couldn’t see him. He breathed in deeply through his nose. “What’s your name?”

He hesitated. “Caleb Widogast.” He sighed as he caught his breath but his heart was still pounding hard in his chest. “Why did you not hang up? When you realized it was a wrong number?”

“I don’t know, man,” she mumbled in a way that told him she knew exactly why she didn’t hang up and was embarrassed by it. “You sounded… scared. I thought you might need help or something, whatever.” The line was silent for two heartbeats. “Do you?” she asked, her voice curious. “Need help?”

He sighed. “I am fine. It was just a dream.”

“You called someone at three in the morning because it scared you so badly, that doesn’t sound like just a fucking dream.” 

Caleb cleared his throat. “Thank you. I am sorry to wake you.”

“I was up already, haven’t slept yet. Get some sleep, man, it’ll be better in the morning.”

He expected her to hang up then but she didn’t and he realized that she was waiting for him to be the one to cut off their connection. He let it hang in the moment before finally hitting the red phone symbol on his screen and the time keeper stopped counting up and started blinking red.

He thought about calling Nott but found that he wasn’t scared anymore.

He got a call two days later.

He frowned and pulled the vibrating phone out of his pocket. 

No one ever called him, not even Nott. He was pretty sure that his phone hadn’t rung since he bought it a few months ago. He hadn’t turned the ringtone off so an upbeat chime filled his apartment.

He checked the number and got excited at first. It was Nott’s number. Then his excitement went away just as quickly. There was an 8 instead of a 9. He thought about not answering it, just hanging it up, turning off the ringer, and going back to finish cooking his breakfast. But she seemed like the kind of person to keep calling until she got what she wanted.

He sighed and answered it. “H-Hello?”

“Who the fuck is Nott and why does she keep calling me?”

Caleb blinked in surprise. “What?”

“Nott Brenatto. Or Veth, I guess, she comes up on caller ID as Veth Brenatto. She keeps fucking calling me and trying to convince me to be your friend. Did you tell her my number?”

“I- No! I mentioned to her that your number was just the same as hers but with an 8 instead of 9, so… I suppose I did tell her your number.”

The woman sighed. “I don’t need any friends, alright?” she asked. “And I don’t need some halfling I don’t know calling me twenty times trying to set me up with any.”

“I apologize, she just worries about me. I’ll tell her to stop.”

“Good.” Then she hung up on him.

Caleb finished his breakfast and shoveled it onto a plate before picking the phone back up and dialing Nott’s number, double checking the 9.

It clicked as it was picked up. “Hello, Mr. Caleb?”

Caleb couldn’t stop the small smile from creeping across his mouth. “ _ Gut Morgen _ , Lucas. May I speak to your mother, please?”

“No.”

Caleb blinked and tilted his head in confusion. “Why not?”

“The lady won’t answer when she calls anymore so now she called her from Papa’s phone and they’re yelling at each other.”

“What lady?”

“The fucking bitch.”

Caleb choked on nothing and had to turn away and cough into his fist. “The what-”

He cut himself off when he heard Nott’s voice come over the phone, but it was distant, like she was on the other side of the room. “Caleb is a fucking delight and you would lucky to be his friend! Yeah, well fuck you too!” There was a pause. “She hung up on me! That fucking bitch!”

Caleb sighed. “Luc, could you pass me to your mother now that that’s finished, please?”

“Okay. Momma! Mr. Caleb is on the phone!”

There was some shuffling on the other end of the line. “Caleb,” Nott said, her voice a little tinged with nervousness. “What- What’s up?”

“Stop bothering that young woman,” he said sternly. 

“What? I wasn’t- Who-”

“Nott. Please. I am fine, I don’t need you to harass people to be my friend. I have you.”

Nott sighed. “But I can’t be there all the time.”

“You are there when I need you and that is more than enough. I am fine, Nott. Please don’t call her anymore. Promise me.”

Nott grumbled quietly under her breath. “But-”

“Promise.”

“Fine. I promise.”

Caleb nodded. “Good. And stop cussing in front of your son, he is basically a soundboard at this point.”

“What? Luc, what did you say to Mr. Caleb? Hey, come back- I gotta go, he’s making a break for it. Call me later!” Then she hung up the phone.

Caleb sighed but he was smiling.

Caleb gasped as he woke up a week later, sweat pooling around his eyes. He shuddered and sat up quickly, pushing the blankets off of him. He reached instantly for his phone, typing in Nott’s phone number and feeling instantly better the second he pushed the final digit. He pressed his phone to his ear as his breathing started to calm but it didn’t even ring.

‘The customer you are trying to reach has not set up their-’ said a robotic feminine voice until Caleb cursed and tossed the phone away. Nott must have dropped her phone in the toilet again. His heart rate started ratcheting up once more until his vision started to swim and he realized that he wasn’t breathing. He reached blindly for where he’d thrown the phone and closed his hand around it, dialing a number that he only knew by heart because it was so similar to Nott’s.

It rang three times before there was a click and a voice on the other end sleepily grunted instead of saying hello.

“B-Beau?”

“I guess…” she mumbled and he sighed in relief when he recognized her voice. He heard shifting on the other side of the line and her distant voice saying ‘Fucking shit’ before she was back. “It’s one o’ clock in the morning, man.”

“Yes, that is when nightmares tend to happen. At night.”

“Well what’d you call me for? I thought this was Nott’s thing?”

“She did not answer, her phone was not working.” Beau just hummed on the other end and he paused in case there was more deriding she wanted to get out or in case she hung up. She did neither of those things. “I am sorry, though, it seems that you were sleeping this time.”

“Kinda. Passed out counts as sleeping, right?” 

“I suppose so.” 

They fell into silence again for a few minutes until she sighed. “Alright man, you clearly have something you wanna talk about, let’s hear it.”

“I do not really want to talk about it, I just…” Talking about it might put her in danger.

“Needed to feel like you weren’t alone?” He didn’t speak, only nodded even though she couldn’t see. “Yeah, I get that. Wish I had someone to call when I felt that way. My go-to solution is getting drunk and finding a hot girl to go home with until I forget about it.”

“You could… you could call me.”

Beau sighed and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. “Thanks, man,” she said, the emotion in her voice indecipherable. “I might take you up on that. Don’t worry though, my freak outs happen at reasonable times of day unlike some people I could mention, ten o’ clock at the latest.”

He huffed and rolled his eyes. “I will let you get back to sleep then. Goodnight.”

Beau laughed out loud. “Yeah, night.” Then she hung up.

Caleb sat his phone off the side and let out a heavy breath, breathing easy for the first time since he’d woken up. 


End file.
